SimpleIDE
github.com
github.com
Another tiny open-source IDE (for Java) is https://github.com/bobbylight/RText
Click on the 3 dots on the top bar, View Mode, Window. It works for example for the file tree, Runners pane, Terminals etc. And it's easy to "dock" them again (an icon shows up in the window to do that) so you can try it easily.
I always keep some stuff like diffs, for example, in separate windows, it just makes me less confused about what's "temporary buffers" (as you would say in emacs) VS "actual files".
BlueJ is Zen-simple but surprisingly usable for real work. If I could have only one IDE and had to choose between minimal and bloated, I'd pick minimal every time.
Dedicated for sure though, and commendable, especially since it's FOSS.
I've been looking into "best" ways of creating Windows GUI apps from Linux and apart from C/Cpp with native Windows APIs most options seem to focus on React Native and web technologies.
Is SimpleIDE a valid option for this? Does it spit out an .exe file that I can run on a vanilla Windows 11 installation?
That this popped up on HN is fortunate, and oddly specific to my needs. I'm in a position where I have to support some legacy .NET software for the manufacturers we service and prefer working in Linux when and if possible, so this IDE seems targeted to me. Looking forward to giving it a shot and seeing if it replaces VSCodium in my routine.
Have you considered Lazarus? I use it with plain C for the logic (not C++).
Edit: I can't seem to find a clear mention of cross-compilation on the lazarus website, and a web search points me to several free pascal wikis. On the Lazarus IDE website it mostly mentions that Lazarus IDE itself can run on both Windows and Linux. Ideally I'd do everything on Linux and ship an exe to Windows, but this seems to be very hard to do nowadays.
And webviews are simple to start within some host language, I have my own mini-webview-host written in .NET that provides functions for file IO, file-selection dialogs,etc.
Outside of that, more serious seemingly still viable non-lowlevel (QT/GTK) non-web cross-platform options:
- Dart/flutter seems very popular, it's a new language to learn for most but seems to have been given the chance to mature and seems to be gaining.
- in the .NET world Avalonia (desktop focused, inheris a lot from WPF architecturally and has a paid crossplatform WPF shim)
- Also .NET, MAUI (better for more "mobile" like/focused designs).
- If you're doing games and are already rendering polygons, IMGui seems to be the go-to option.
- Lazarus (Pascal) seems to still carry the old VB/Delphi torch.
That said, what I'd love to see pesonally is for library developers to start looking at sane/fast ways to develop UI applications with modern language features to have non-insane state management. Either as thin shims over the existing lowlevel libraries or as first-class support.
C++ and Java has evolved a lot just in the past 10 years, as have some other languages.
But the web-focus seems to have left desktop UI development in a rut outside of new players for new languages.
If it does, this SimpleIDE might be an option but also it might be so that the only good option would be Visual Studio... which requires Windows. But switching to it will give you two more options - WinForms and WPF - both are old but tested GUI frameworks.
The later versions, being structured and AOT compiled were quite good for a dynamic language, with a beginner friendly approach that allowed to scale up to complex problems.
Python still isn't where BASIC was in the 1990's.
As a person who is still quite bummed that he compleatly missed VisualBASIC for various reasons, and is even more disappointed that Livecode rug-pulled their opensource version, and has never found a GUI development system for Python which feels comfortable, this rings true.
Still working to finish up my current project (essentially text-based 3D modeling using (Open)PythonSCAD), and suffering analysis-paralysis for the successor to it (a scriptable drawing program which integrates with it), but hopefully something obvious will present itself for cross-platform opensource graphical app development.
I'd love to see a cross-platform GUI toolkit w/ drag-drop and nice code integration --- currently considering Lazarus/ObjectPascal....
Outside Windows, the best alternative was REALbasic, nowadays known as Xojo (https://www.xojo.com).
If you're talking about Pascal dialects, that might be the option. Delphi can cross-compile, but the editor itself is Windows only.
Althought there is RemObjects as well, they used to be responsible for Delphi for .NET, and the product eventually became Hydra, after they ended their relationship with Embarcadero/Codegear.
In the beginning, many VB devs were irritated, because VB.NET 1.0 was mostly C# with VB syntax, however eventually Microsoft added back many of the previous capabilities, like the Me object, REPL, and so on.
However nowadays the language is considered done, and they are only updating it to keep up with specific .NET features for interop with C#.
I learned about vibe coding two months ago and, wow, writing this with Claude has been lots of fun. Almost to the point in the project of having full AI integration in the IDE.
Does it still have the drag-n-drop GUI feature to make graphical apps, or is that a strictly Windows thing?
It has been challenging trying to get Gtk 3 widgets to play nice. Finally just rolled my own custom-drawn editor, treeview, and listbox. Going to release them later in a library.
I think it's cool that you did it, it's just not a language that I've seen get a lot of love.
And, Linux lacks any such tools. Not even VS Code has a plugin for VB.
I think it’s cool you built this. While I don’t think I will personally use this as all I do is more infrastructure stuff now, this still seems like a pretty project and I wish you all the best.
You could also have used Mono.TextEditor btw. I personally find it better than GtkSourceView, and for having ported it to GTK# 3 myself, it was rather straightforward to port.
Gtk 3 has a weird way of doing scrolled controls that I couldn't accept because the nesting caused all kinds if issues. Also, the Gtk text control is incredibly slow when the file in it grows past 600 lines.
I wrote the editor control with an architectural design I created originally back in 2004, and subsequently lost. Much, much faster implementation. Took about 3 weeks with Claude.
Also wrote a treeview, listbox, colorpicker. Those took a day or two each with Claude. I will be releasing those controls in a dotnet library when I am finished with SimpleIDE.
Wait, who is cutting onions?
Ha, found: https://github.com/tanathos/ClippyVS